What privacy problem are you solving?

The Incognito app is the interface for users to access some pretty unique privacy features, but it’s hard to use. People get lost in the tabs. It’s easy to make mistakes. While significant improvements have been made since the first iteration in November, there’s still plenty to be done.

What is the solution?

Design-wise: strip it back and give core elements space to breathe. Dev-wise: focus on making important actions rock solid. UX-wise: study feedback to see how users actually use the app, and implement it.

Which solutions do people resort to because this doesn’t exist yet?

At the time of writing, 10,300 people are currently using the Incognito app. We’ll try to give them something better.

Who are you?

We are @binh, @phathoang, @AnhTu, @Mo_Incognito, @Anh_Ho and @ning. We developed and designed the back and front end of the old app, the current app, the old web, the current web, and many of Incognito’s other products and initiatives. This month, our sole focus will be on whipping the app into shape.

Why do you care?

The app is the first impression most users will have of Incognito. It’s pretty important to get right.

I have a feedback.
In the pDEX there is no direct option to send coins, even though it is possible by using the Send button that is in the menu. Why not just move it there? Or at least have a quick access to the withdraw button instead.

hey - in a couple of weeks, @tien will release an update that will allow you guys to trade out of whichever account you want. this should solve the need for withdrawals/deposits.

in general, we’re in the process of streamlining the entire app (starting with core actions like shield/unshield/send/receive/trade). so if you have any other feedback, do let us know! i’ll post some sketches here today too.

2- Could you merge the same coins in the different chains into one coin? For example, there are two coins for BUSD. One for Binance Chain (Privacy BUSD-BD1), one for Ethereum (Privacy BUSD). This creates two problems: First, the liquidity may be divided into two pairs. This problem does not appear currently because the users probably are not aware of the one in Binance Chain or cannot trust that one since it does not have any logo. Second, the withdrawal fee (~$1) of ERC20 BUSD is ~75x higher than that(~0.001 BNB=0.017) of Binance BUSD. The minimum withdrawal amount is way higher than that of Binance BUSD, too. In fact, in a broader sense, my worry is that we will have this problem after Uniswap/Kyber integration. I hope we do not see pWBTC/PRV pair in addition to pBTC/PRV pair in pDEX.

3- And some missing but nice-to-have features about the lost papp browser:

Bookmarking the app sites

Navigation buttons (backward, forward)

Sharing (Very same example: please see Community tab in the app and tap Share button under any post)

Routing the links to other apps (Very same example: please tap the tweet in this post, if Twitter is installed in your phone, it opens directly)

Since papp browser didn’t have sharing and routing, all links were being redirected to the browser view, and the process flow of the papp was being corrupted.

this week we held some internal focus groups and continued to churn out sketches. while we’re seeing a good number of transactions at the moment, we think the flow could definitely be improved.

if you’d like to be a beta tester for the incognito app, just reply to this topic!

here are some changes we are considering – remove ‘in-network/out-network’ for both send and receive (generally considered to be confusing). Separate into 4 core actions: shield, unshield, send, receive.

on the new balances page (vault? wallet? keychain? name undecided, let me know what you think), users will see their total shielded balance in PRV. they will have the choice to shield more, or unshield their coins and remove them from the incognito network. account selection will remain.

this coming week, we’ll all work in parallel. we’ll aim to get the new flow on the staging app, keep talking to people, and keep exploring ways to improve on what we have. the chain team will also work on the backend to improve the user experience, reducing the likelihood of tx error or order timeout – especially when it comes to out-network transactions like shield and unshield.